"Wildlands" is among the most frustrating games I’ve spent 70 hours with this year.

Frustration isn’t an emotion you’d want to associate with any game you’d spend almost three days straight playing, but baffling game design choices, glitches aplenty, and a convoluted story that would disgust even jaded ghost writers for the- dearly departed- titular author grind away some spectacular highs to be had with friends.

“Wildlands” initially comes off as a potential successor to the irreverent “Saints Row” series, a franchise focused on off-color, goofy criminal antics without the semi-grounded worlds found in similar titles like “Grand Theft Auto.”

Not exactly a connection one would make with the gaming franchise that assisted in making jingoism and “might makes the USA right” the theme du jour of shooting games, but a welcome change of pace.

You and up to three friends are given the titles of “Ghosts” within the U.S. Army, a special forces unit given complete autonomy to complete missions against all enemies foreign and domestic.

Your latest mission deploys you into nation of Bolivia to dispatch a massive drug cartel known as “Santa Blanca,” run by a tattooed Vin Diesel-look alike known as “El Sueño.”

You and your fellow ghosts, directed by a CIA handler who is totally not Claire Danes, must take down the cartel piece by piece until you force Sueño into your gunsight.

Clearing that path of destruction through Boliva will require you to arrest or take out a cast of almost two dozen other characters in the cartel. These leaders range from a corpse-disposal specialist with the mind of a child, a disenfranchised Roman-Catholic cardinal, to a Berkley post-doc looking to make a few bucks among many others.

From there, the missions splinter off further, requiring you to complete story missions, thus drawing the cartel members out of hiding, or extracurricular activities including bolstering support for the native rebels, taking down supply convoys, and broadcasting propaganda.

The story missions are both the highlight of the game and its greatest pratfall. Some generate unique scenarios and locations, such a infiltrating the torture dungeon run by a pair of lovers in the cartel, but a large number rely upon mechanics that had become trite by the end of “Grand Theft Auto 3” in 2001.

Instantaneous failure states, restrictive time limits, and frequent removal of abilities you’ve spent all game developing occur in many of the story missions. Worse yet, too many simply fall apart at the seams when playing with others due to potential poor Internet connections or bizarre glitches.

Despite my numerous shortcomings with the game’s mission design, the amount of content available to participate in is simply staggering. The fictional Bolivia you explore, alongside three other players at any time, truly feels like a massive place. Each of the cities and locals you’ll explore also vary in climate, theme, and general enemy occupation further varying the numerous providences.

Cooperative play is easy to set up with straightforward options to match you up with other players

As you expunge the bases of the cartel or bought-out police force across the map, you’ll unlock a variety of new firearms and clothing to customize your individual solider.

When not locked into the story missions, you’re mostly free to take on objectives as you see fit. You and your fellow players can attempt to lock down areas methodically with silencers, distant sniper shots, and intimate interrogations. You and those same players could also tie a red bandana around your heads, reload your comically oversized machine guns, and charge in guns blazing while loaded into the back of an SUV.

Violence is ultimately the only solution to most situations, but the variety in its execution along with the ability to adapt on the fly keeps most encounters varied.

The aforementioned narrative begins as a fairly straightforward military thriller without a sense of comedic timing and tone before wildly- fitting enough- devolving into a bizarre tale of personal revenge.

The handler character, along with many of the others you encounter, all remain consistently uninteresting or unlikable through the campaign. Many of the choices you’ll be forced to make, primarily through vignettes you’ll have no control, also defy logic.

Action games focused primarily on cooperation, especially those with long narrative campaigns, are few and far between. “Wildlands” does tap a particular audience most mainstream video games either fail to capitalize on or outright ignore, it’s just unfortunate a sterling idea comes with so many blemishes and caveats.